Yup. Even in the lame shape it's in it has a nice vibe unplugged. Just sounds different, more like wood than some other guitars. Has a nice ring.

And the finish. I LOVE old burst JR's and MM'ers.

I'm comparing it to an '02 R4, an '09? LP JR, not a CS version just the @$900 street price one. FWIW that guitar sets a standard for loud and proud. HS that guitar sings. Far better than the price would indicate. And a Tele I just built, Swamp Ash w/Maple neck.

Plugged into my Li'l Dawg 5E3 the pickup, microphonic? squeals and it feeds back like crazy. All wiring accounted for and connected though.

In perfect world my brother in law would say "ya know I never play it, you keep it" and I'd order a Lollar ASAP. Then it would be the old wood LP JR I'll never buy.

Based on the serial number, its a 1961 model. The early '61s were singlecut, the later are DCs. The angled wraparound tailpiece was carried through into early 1962 then they changed to the lightning bolt TP. Install a Lollar or Novak drop-in P90 and give it a good setup and it will be a nice guitar. Talk your brother-in-law into selling it to you.

So i put it back together. The fret board is stunning and the frets are perfect. It intonates really well and plays great. Till you plug it in.

It is a bright guitar but behind the bright is that nice JRish mid range snarl.. Problem is the pots are so bad you can't get there. They have no range at all. Unless they are wide open the guitar sounds pretty bad. I can't really dial down the tone w/o loosing tons of output. Both pots drop output and tone really fast on the dial.

As I said before, I'd put the stock stuff in a bag and make a new loaded pickgaurd. I have 250 and 500k pots here, I have a bag of old PIO caps in just the right values. Kinda frustrating.